The Bad Sides of Life: Coping Difficulties through Literature
diorama which is hoped to enable her parents meet and the panicking situation of her brother Jeff
’s runaways would make both parents ‘look at each other and touch hands...
kiss her and they’ll never fight again…” and ‘see that they belong together. That we’re a family. Any minute now Daddy will tell her he’s sorry he left” 131-
132. Yet, the plan ends up in a greater crash for fighting over Jeff’s runaway. Once
Karen realizes that even a crisis will not prevent their parents from fighting, she begins to accept the inevitable result.
Through Karen’s case, readers are brought to their insight that among the
conflicts which have been so painful to her, Karen learns that conflicts are needed to resolve instead of to keep. With the greater tenses growing each day and the messy
feeling she feels upon her parents, brother, and sister, Karen begins to change her mind believing that having her mother and father apart is not bad because being
together is much more impossible and hurting everybody in the house. Up to these three stages of therapeutic reading, experts believes young readers
can benefit from the fictional characters’ emotion, experiences, and solution that it is
possible to generate them in their own problem or at least to believe that there are more than one alternatives in dealing with difficult moment like parental conflicts to
try as young readers are allowed to gain variety of stories with this issue. The second issue of divorce brings significance, too. It is of course sad to see
children cling to any evidence that their family was a happy and then they have to see that it breaks up. In the situation of divorced family, Johnson, et al explains that as
well as adults who need to have their own accounting about why the marriage failed, children also need to understand clearly what happens, why, and how
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. Presenting divorced parents in children’s literature like in It’s Not the End
indeed delivers more benefits in fulfilling children’s need about divorce. Beside that it can help them to respond to children’s pain and to heal their emotional hurt through
identifying the similar problems and life of Karen, it is also useful to use the story to uncover the mystery of divorce that might become despair for children that Blume in
detail provides answers kids of divorce question. Starting from Karen’s assumption that her mother is going to marry another
man, the lawyer Mr Hague because she now looks happier than before 66, Karen also thinks that the divorce is caused by her mother’s way in cooking as she often
hears her father tells that she should try more recipes 67, or because her mother likes antiques while her father has different interest that he sells modern furniture
67. Struggling to find the reasons in order to help her parents reconcile, all of the possibilities coming to Karen and to many children are so often truly frightening. So
many gaps Karen has to fill in answering her own questions to understand her parent’s decision. She does not easily get the point believing that if her mother is
miserable without her daddy and that if her father is so miserable away from the kids then Karen asks why the parents are getting separated.
Here the presence of imaginative story like It’s Not the End can help children to understand what is happening that this drives young readers to the cathartic
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Janet R. Johnston, et al., “Through the Eyes of Children: Healing Stories about Divorce.” Family Advocate 21.1 1998: 17.
experience to feel relieved with answers of their confusion. When in the real life children are not sufficiently supported by the situation, Blume can present Jeff as the
brother who know more about divorce than Karen, Val as another divorced kid who is more or less experienced to deal with parental separation, the grandfather who
understands and supports Karen’s idea to get her parents back together, the implicit recommendation of the writer to read The Boys and Girls Book About Divorce, and
parents who even sometime unsatisfyin g, are willing to make Karen’s confusion clear
142. Jeff, even though knows a little more, is the nearest source for Karen to ask
when she wonders what is happening. She desperately wants to know whether her mother has money or they would be starving after the divorce so that Jeff explains
that ‘I think they make some kind of deal when they get divorced. Dad pays a certain amount of money to Mom every month.” p. 63 in which in the other page, her father
makes it clearer by saying that the lawyer will arrange for her support and alimony for her mother 71. Blume also explains that there will be regular meeting that can be
arranged by the moving-away parent and the children after the divorce in which somehow relieves children’s fear that divorce means the end of the parents’ love to
the children. Blume also presents Garfa to have similar view to Karen that they both are
willing to get the couple back. The existence of Garfa seems to understand part of children’s dream to always want to see their parents live side by side happily and ever
after. This kind of combination results in making the book more realistic because PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
Blume does not put aside Karen’s important feeling just to deliver the message that having the parents divorced is not the end of the world.
While the parents also have sufficiently well reference about divorce, Karen’s
mother also clearly says that people do not get divorced over simple things like what Karen assumes 67. She mentions that the only reason they get divorced is that
because they do not enjoy being together. They do not love each other anymore, yet they still love the kids just the same, but not each other 68. That according to her
mother, living in a house without constant fighting will be happier for Karen. Karen is also explained by her mother that her thought about her dad who wants to marry
somebody else is not true because the quick process of divorce indeed will relieve both her mother and father to get everything settled. Moreover, her mother believes
that Karen’s father would not run off and simply get married during the divorce process as that is not the main problem of the marriage 115.
The fictional characters with fictional problems may not really reflect the truth of the varied condition of children in divorce and the diversity reasons of parental
separation. Yet, It’s Not the End delivers an optimistic perspective in seeing divorce in order to help children dealing with anger, sadness, and being uninformed about
what is happening. Blume ’s novel implies that sometime divorce is the best thing that
can happen to a family which can be a tool to readers gaining the insight. At the same time, divorce might be upsetting and mourning. Yet, the novel excellently illustrates
the character to realize that divorce does not mean the end of the family. She recognizes that the mother is much happier even though she cries as she remembers
the marriage. Blume is likely to say that it can be better, especially for Karen, to grow PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
up in a peaceful single-parent home than with a tense of two-parents full of constant fighting. Though some parts of the book are sad, but without being depressing, the
story may uplift and inspire the young readers to be the insight by the way Karen and her family pick up the pieces, rebuild them, and eventually they know they are still
family. The third analysis relates to the open story-ending of Blubber which is
problematic because the bullies do not get punished. It can be figured out that there is useful contribution that can practically help children cope the unsettled realities.
Children who once witnessed or did bullying know that the real bullies do not always win, even few of them get punished or realized they were wrong and later on became
better people. Cormier asserts that in real life, children know that the right and the
good guy do not always win and that life is not always happy ending.
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Kids also can learn from the insight implied to understand that it is also few of the bullied get pounded for it in the end and accepted for who they are. Many adults
object to the ending as it is painful read and the reason is that because the reality tells them so. Presenting the uncertain
results in having a process of kid’s life can help them preparing themselves to accept that the good do not always win and the bad
must meet their unfortunate. Even though some readers are upset and disappointed because Wendy, the
meanest girl in the class, does not suffer anything for what she has done to Linda, the target, they are in the other way helped to understand that so often the case of
bullying does not have a clear resolution in the real life, while Linda stays all alone
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West 30.
after her friendship with Wendy in bullying the protagonist Jill ends. Readers come to the conclusion that Jill, too, is alone. Yet, it is a catharsis because it is not sad ending
to her. At lunch she invites the neutral Rochelle to eat in the same table as well as to be her partner for the class trip.
By lunch time it was easy to tell that Wendy and Laurie were going to be best friends so were Donna and Caroline. Some people are always changing best
friends. I’m glad me and Tracy aren’t that way. Still it’s nice to have a regular friend in your class, e
ven if it’s not a best friend. I ate lunch with Rochelle again. She’s kind of quite but I get the feeling that a lot goes on inside her
head. So later, when it was time to go home, and we all run for our lockers, I said, “Hey Rochelle…you want to be my partner for the class trip?
She put on her jacket, closed her locker door, and said, “Why not?” 127
Here, readers can acknowledge the values can be taken by being good friend even regular friend like her and Tracy is somehow better than making fun of them
only to please a best friend like Wendy. This accommodates children to face the realities and all the unfairness it
provides to their life. Yet, surprisingly, Blubber enables readers to learn a lesson in fighting against bullying in a different way, in which it does not necessarily end up
with punishment to the cruel characters, but making bullies respecting others especially honouring the meaning of friendship.
Forever also delivers its surprising ending since the commitment of being forever with Michael finally breaks up. Katherine who has fallen in love to Michael
and has thought that the love will be forever has to give new meaning what is meant by ‘forever’. After a hurtful separation with Michael to identify, readers find that
Blume narrates Katherine to have relieved feeling to remember her memory with Michael as the ones she does not need to regret. It is said,
I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do
—that maybe I always will. Ill never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years
older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think its just that Im not ready for forever. I hope that Michael knew what I was thinking. I hope that
my eyes got the message through to him, because all I could manage to say was,
See you around …” 110
Indeed, at the end of the story, Katherine and Michael both generally live their life like an ordinary college students as Blume implied. Sexuality, especially, in
dealing with children has been strongly associated with sin and strongly related to harms and damages. Without being judgmental, Forever delivers the truth and values
about sexuality by making the readers feel less fearful and sinful. Yet, it is more in full of hopes and solutions that things about sexuality run well whenever one who
commits it can be responsible in his decision. With such non-judgmental fashion, stories with sensitive topics like Forever will help young readers to feel free to
express and share their hidden problems. The next practical uses of delivering bad side of life is that beside known as
one of the most frequently challenged novels; Deenie is also popular as an informational novel about scoliosis. Sharing the medical terms, the definition, and the
treatment about it has been beneficial to answer children’s curiosity all about it. Both for those who suffer and those who do not, Deenie helps them to acknowledge to
such topic to make it more familiar and accessible discussion. It is, too, beneficial for kids with scoliosis to be less afraid and less alienated so that they can be involved in
the cathartic reading that their loneliness and fear i s solved by reading the other’
experiences. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
From the very start of the novel, it is shown that scoliosis has identified symptoms when the teacher Mrs Rappoport finds Deenie the protagonist has her skirt
longer on one side than the other when bending to touch her hands to the toes 35. As she is diagnosed to have scoliosis, Deenie starts looking up the encyclopaedia and
dictionary to find the definition to have general idea about the illness 57. Blume also writes a detail process of the treatment, including the consultation with the
doctors 72-78, the measurement using X-Ray 52-53, the process of making the mould for the brace 79-86, and also how to wear it 98-103. Kids who are
inexperienced in dealing such medical are helped by the way Blume uses the language which almost closed to seventh grader. This is one of the examples of the
explanation about how Scoliosis is described. I looked up scoliosis. It said: Skoh lih OH sihs, means a side-to-side curve or
bend of the normally straight spine or backbone. Scoliosis may occur in any part of the spine. It may be single curved like a C or double curved like an
S. Scoliosis starts in childhood or the teens. It has strong familial tendency. Treatment includes exercises, braces or surgery. 57
The information runs smoothly through the story. It naturally appears from looking up encyclopaedia and dictionaries to the conversation with the doctors that
Deenie records and utters transformed to be dialogue and narration. Yet, the thing which is not less important about this book is that Deenie provides beside the
information about Scoliosis, it also presents the feeling about having it. Deenie helps children with scoliosis to cope with the emotional problem of
wearing Milwaukee brace and other stressful changes dealing with the lifestyle. Especially because Deenie the protagonist is characterized as a teenager whose
circumstance highly demands normalcy, Deenie also deals with body image or social rejection. Deenie depicts how an eighth grader firstly faces the fact that she has to
wear the brace for the next four years. She can not imagine wearing the brace and going through her life normally. Indeed, the brace has taken over her life
dominatingly. I went up the stairs as fast as I could, slammed my bedroom door and tried to
flop down on my bed. But I couldn’t even flop anymore. So I cursed. I said every bad word I knew…. Even a stupid ordinary thing like sitting on the
toilet wasn’t the same for me now. The brace made everything different. 106
The novel also understands the way how the brace is very painful. It describes through Deenie that the plastic jabs the body almost feels like a cage and the purple
bruises it creates if worn without the special undershirt 146. It becomes more problematic when her mother obsesses much in her to be a model even though Deenie
does not even know that she really wants to be one. Her mother’s notice that Deenie is gifted with a beautiful face has turned her
to a great pressure to say that Deenie has to use not to waste that face. This makes her feels like the one who should be blamed for the curved spine that so many model
agencies refuse her. Deenie realizes that she is born not only with a face to regard because she is a complex person who also has mind and feeling.
“I’m not just a face” I shouted. “I’m a person, too. Did either one of you ever think of that?” I ran past them and up to my room.
Ma yelled after me. “Don’t be ungrateful, Deenie Aunt Rae was only trying to help.”
“Ha I’ll bet you’d both like to trade me in for some girls with a straight spine” I shouted downstairs. “Then you wouldn’t have to wait four years” I
slammed my door shut. 134 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
As how readers can identify that wearing Milwaukee brace is mentally and physically hurts and uneasy, Deenie helps to child readers to know that after all, it is
not that important to think about the brace. In fact, there will always be people or family who forget that she is wearing it. For most of the time, in family and
friendship appearance does not become the reason why people love each other. It does not prevent Deenie to go to the prom night and to hold hands with Buddy 159
as well as be friend with Midge and Janet. This rejects the idea that as a teenager who eager to find normalcy, a girl does not need to much consider what others might say
about the brace. It does not define them. It becomes important to Deenie to question the body image, to stand up for herself, and finally to create healthier relationship
with everyone around her. The fifth issue of religious problem also has healing contribution. Children
who were born with parents from different religious beliefs might find it a relief to connect with character that has the same problems. Appearing with the exploration of
a half-Jewish and a half-Christian girl facing the problems with finding her own organized religion, Margaret offers the candid and the intimate insights of the
dilemmas of practicing no religion in her family to avoid complication. When some parents might not have any clue to how confusing such situation can be for those
children, Margaret also provides a wake-up call for the parents to consider about the issue.
However, as a newcomer in the new town, New Jersey, Margaret has to face a situation in which going to religious schools has become a real and practical social
problem. It is because every kid in town belongs to a certain religion, while Margaret PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
is nothing. For the American adults, it may not be a profound identity problem, but for a twelve-year old girl like Margaret, it is a dilemma in her existence 81. With
such pressures, Margaret manages a research paper for her school project on religion. She starts her struggles to find the suitable religion to hold.
Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret. What would you think of me doing a project on religion? You wouldn’t min, would you, God? I’ll tell you all about
it. And I won’t make any decisions without asking you first. I think it’s time
for me to decide what to be. I can’t go on being nothing for ever, can I? 49
The book shares that toward the end, Margaret is so buffeted by the pressures all around her. Her first step to go to synagogue with her Jewish grandparent who is
thrilled with Margaret’s intention to find the religion on the contrary seriously disturbs her liberal mother, who sees religion only as a source of turmoil,
“That’s ridiculous” My mother said when I told her. “You know how Daddy and I feel about religion.”
“You said I could choose when I grow up” “But you’re not ready to choose yet, Margaret”
“I just want to try it out,” I argued. “I’m going to try church too, so don’t get hysterical”
“I’m not hysterical I just think it’s foolish for a girl of your age to bother herself with religion.” 51
Margaret also tries the local Presbyterian Church with her friend Janie but the prayer book does not make sense to her and the sermon by the minister is hard for her
to follow. Margaret also takes a try to give confession in a catholic church but she also fails to feel him the way she has the private talks to God every night,
Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret. I’ve been looking for you, God. I looked in temple. I looked in church. And today I looked for you when I
wanted to confess. But you weren’t there. I didn’t feel you at all. Not the way I do when
I talk to you at night. Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone? 100
It turns to be very ironic when her own dilemma of having to choose the Y and the Jewish Community Center indeed makes her forsake her personal feeling about God
as she has private talks to God every night. Through her wishes Margaret expects God will give her clue but He never does. She gets angry and stops talking to Him
especially after the bad fortunes come to her life like a lying best friend, getting troubled for being easily provoked, and being involved in her parents and
grandparents’ dispute of what religion she has to belong 111. As readers are allowed to get the identification of an agnostic girl with the
problems, in the end of the story, young readers are dragged to the cathartic experience where Margaret does not come to her fixed choice to a certain organized
religion. She explicitly says her conclusion of the religious experiment in her letter instead of a booklet to be handed in to her teacher as the report of the school project.
Margaret in fact does not enjoy the experiment as she comes up to an understanding that choosing a religion is not an easy job.
I don’t think a person can decide to be a certain religion just like that. It’s like having to choose your own name. You think about it a long time and then you
keep changing your mind. If I should ever have children I will tell them what religion they are so they can start learning about it at an early age. Twelve is
very late to learn. 118
Margaret understands it is hard to be different from the pals when it is young. As kids question about the distinguished religious identity, it seems that Margaret
does not significantly satisfies her own searching because Blume does not find the most suitable religion for her at the end of the story.
However, Blume implies another alternative in facing such dilemma to be readers’ insight. She offers hopes as it is a good start for the agnostic kids motivated
by parents’ decision to see religion to begin exploring themselves so that they will know what religion they want to be when they grow up. It is true when Margaret says
it might be too late to decide religion as people should be inherited one as they are born. However, without blaming and alienating the present condition of Margaret and
many other agnostic kids, Blume also helps them to understand it is important to underline that such experiment need time and patience. Yet she knows that such
process is always possible to manage. Finally, the topic of death in Tiger Eyes also offers important issues to be
taken as a healing story. It is necessary to know that Blume’s Tiger Eyes focuses on a family’s struggle to recover emotionally after a member of the family is murdered by
armed robbers. The book is told from 15-years-old Davey, who needs to deal with her own growing-up issues as a teenager as well as with her grief.
In dealing with bereavement in children, Tiger Eyes addresses the relationship between the attachment and the loss from the point of view of Davey. It depicts to
serve readers’ identification about how much it hurts to face a sudden death of a father. She stays in bed 5 and stops eating 7. She does not even want to start
school in the fall 82. Davey also feels nervous to meet people. She cannot sleep without a bread knife under her pillow 74 and she hyperventilated when she saw
blood or a gun 37 . She avoids discussion about to anyone including her friend about
the murder because it is too painful for her 89. In this point, the book helps young readers to know that it is okay to be scared, angry, and sad when losing someone they
love by sharing similar difficulties that this also reduces the feeling of loneliness PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
because there are others who feel the same. Those kids can also they realize that their problems and emotions are a shared experience.
With such identification, the readers can gain new insight about their own problems, which can lead to a therapeutic resolution and new outlook to them. Here,
bibliotherapy offers the idea that literary works can teach problem solving that may not have occurred in the children’s real life. After the murder, Davey hardly finds her
relief because her own mother, the place she wants to rely on and she wants to keep her safe, has to face her own struggles in facing her husband’s death by consuming
regular medicine for the headache 86. In such helpless condition, Blume presents Aunt Bitsy and Uncle Walter as
the caring rela tives who want to help Davey’s family going through the hard time by
taking them move to Los Alamos to have new sight while adapting the grief. They support Davey’s family financially and emotionally and take care of Davey’s mother
to a psychiatrist. In Los Alamos, Davey also begins to dare passing through the reality as she meets a guy in a canyon introducing himself as Wolf. Even though it is
only by being a friend, Wolf helps Davey to only remember her father with good memories and to forget the pain 167-168. In this part, Davey learns to speak up by
writing letters to Wolf about her sadness and anger even though the letter is returned back labelled as ‘moved’ 169-171.
As her mother gets better, Blume also leads Davey to see her mother’s psychiatrist. She is encouraged to speak up for real about what makes her upset about
the murder. Telling everything about the night her father died, Davey recalls that she was there unable to help her father who is dying of being shot 197-199. The silence
has been broken. Davey starts remembering her father with full of life and full of love. The writer shows young readers how family support, time, and therapy can help
people recover from the most traumatic loss in the novel. Not less important, the supports are significantly gained if children want to speak up in order to help
themselves cope the difficult time and then move on. Many children are dealing with fears like death, crime, and war at their early
ages. The events like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or the Persian Gulf War in 1880s have heightened the fears of adults as well as children and made them
more vulnerable. With the constant exposure of the media in the aftermath of the events, Nicholson and Pearson argue that children’s fears of death have been
influenced
134
. As a result, they argue, parents, teachers, and school counsellors have to face with the task of identifying and implementing strategies which enable kids to
cope with the fears. In a review of recent studies, Tarifa and Kloep concluded that children
strongly respond to the world and local events. This leads to the increase of children‘s fears as well as their anxieties about the inability to make the place they live safer.
Nicholson and Pearson add as how United States continues to deal with the uncertainty of the terrorism, school counsellors
can anticipate children’s fears from being heightened that its impacts on children about growing up too tired and too
insecure in learning can be reduced.
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Janice Nicholson I., et al., “Helping Children Cope with Fears: Using Children’s Literature in Classroom Guidance.” Professional School Counseling 7.1 2003 15.
Finally, to conclude this chapter, it needs to say again that from the data analysed, Blume as the author depicts children more in their sameness instead of the
differences when compared to adults’ topics. She embraces variety of tough topics such as parental conflicts, divorce, uncertainties, illness, problem with religion, and
death which rarely appear in children’s books for believing that children should be
happy and healthy in their portrayal. Her ways of writing implies that she disregards kids as the other, the primitive, the deprived, and the different when compared to
adults. At the same time, the empowerment of the child characters in her works has led them to be enjoyable as well as important to read by young readers.
It is delightful because young readers are served with issues which are frequently avoided from their books. Yet, this newness and escape indeed create
pleasures in reading. More than that, child readers are also given opportunity to use their
skill to fill the texts’ gaps when those ‘adults’ topics are silenced for being too hard and difficult.
Indeed, entering the world described in the pages and being involved with the
characters makes possibly gaining new insight and ideas for reading stories with difficult issues they may or may not experience. This way,
the works can be
therapeutic for assisting them with their problems as well as the emotional turmoil. The stories can serve as a springboard of resolution of the dilemma they might suffer.
By mutual sharing or self-help, good books ease feelings of alienation as readers recognize characters with feelings, thoughts, and conditions which are similar to their
own condition as they are able to objectify their own experience, and come to better PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
understanding, and is hoped to move on to more positive attitudes and relationship in the real life.
That is why embracing various issues including the ‘adults’ matters’ can be
beneficial to give opportunity to everyone to be included in literature. It also becomes the reason why dealing with the rarely-mentioned topic will be helpful in giving
therapeutic effects as well as pleasures to child readers. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI